地支 · Chǒu
Chǒu丑
frozen field — damp Earth that stores Metal, patient and load-bearing
The second Earthly Branch — late winter, frozen Earth, a Metal vault. Its zodiac animal is the Ox.
01概覽
Chou (丑) is the second Earthly Branch, and the same distinction holds: Chou is the branch; the Ox is the popular Chinese-zodiac animal that corresponds to it. Chou is not 'the Ox' — it is Chou, a calendrical unit, and the Ox is its familiar label.
As a branch, Chou is the cold, damp earth of late winter — the 12th lunar month, the hours before dawn, the frozen field. Its element is Earth, but a wet, wintry Earth that holds things rather than grows them. Classically it is one of the four 'storage' branches: the vault where Metal is kept in the ground, patient and load-bearing.
02作為時間單位
As a unit of time, Chou rules 01:00–03:00 (the 丑時 double-hour), the 12th lunar month at winter's end, and a north-northeast position. A chart reads it by which pillar it occupies — its placement is a coordinate in the calendar.
03藏干
Chou's hidden stems (藏干) are Yin Earth (己) as its main qi, plus Yin Water (癸) and Yin Metal (辛). That mix is why Chou is more than plain Earth: it is the 'Metal storehouse', earth with refined Metal buried inside and a residue of winter Water. The hidden stems are how a branch carries several elements at once.
04六沖、三合、六合
Chou's clash (六沖) is with Wei (未, the Goat) — the two earthy storehouse branches on opposite sides of the year. It belongs to the Metal trinity (三合) 巳酉丑 (Si–You–Chou) as the storage member, and its six-combination (六合) is with Zi (子, the Rat), the pair combining toward Earth. These are structural ties between chart positions, not event forecasts.
05跨系統對照
| 系統 | 最近的原型 | 備註 |
|---|---|---|
| Zi Wei Dou Shu | One of the twelve fixed cells of a Zi Wei chart — the 丑 position a palace sits on | In Zi Wei the twelve Earthly Branches are the chart's twelve fixed cells: every palace occupies a branch, and a chart's 命宮 (Self Palace) can land on 丑. Its Bazi clash partner 未 (Goat) sits in the cell directly opposite — what Zi Wei reads as the 對宮 (opposite palace) on the same axis. Same twelve branches, used as the spatial frame for the palaces, not as a Bazi pillar. |
| Chinese zodiac (生肖) | The Ox — the popular animal label for the branch Chou | The Ox is the everyday zodiac's name for Chou, but that is the popular layer; the branch Chou — its Earth element, its hidden Metal and Water, its time and interactions — is the technical unit a Bazi chart uses. |
| Western astrology | A loose structural parallel only — twelve divisions of a cycle | No sign maps to a branch. The branches are calendrical units, not a zodiac of personality types; the only parallel is the shared twelve-fold division. |
生肖動物只是地支的通俗別名、不是地支本身，地支與西方星座之間也沒有對應。跨系統對照只是鬆散參考；地支是帶藏干的曆法單位，這個結構生肖與西方占星都沒有。
06以描述而非預言來讀
常見問題
What is the Chǒu Earthly Branch (丑) in BaZi?
The second Earthly Branch — late winter, frozen Earth, a Metal vault. Its zodiac animal is the Ox.
Is the Chǒu Earthly Branch the same as the zodiac animal?
Chou describes a position in time and its elemental character — late-winter storage Earth — not a personality, not a destiny, and not 'you are an Ox'. It is read against the rest of the chart, and the same branch plays out very differently across different lives.